Description: This species is abundantly covered with a luxurious pelage, which is rather uniform grey speckled with brown. However the back is light reddish and the ears and tail are washed with pale blond.

(the “titi of the bamboos”)

Lesson, R.P. (1838). Compléments de Buffon, 2e édition Pp. 280-281.

Wagner, 1840

Callithrix donacophila

Synonyms:Callithrix donacophila (D’Orbigny, 1836).

Distribution: Colombia?

Description: From this species we only know the figure of d’Orbigny. The animal has a dense coat, dirty and light yellowish-brown, also on the forehead, and the hands are whitish, while they are in the other species (personata, melanochir) black.

Distribution: the forests and reeds that border the rivers in the Moxod province, Bolivia.

Description: the face is naked, blackish, the body grey-reddish, darker on the head and the belly. The tail is grey-brown. The hair of the body is ringed with black, white and red, that of the tail is of one colour.

“This synonymy proves very well how badly know this animal is to the authors, and especially how much men like to create new species to connect their names to it and to throw difficulties in science. With the help of M. Lesson, we are trying to unravel the chaos”.

Description: ….We also find them with a grey speckled fur, washed with reddish on the back, the hairs being long and thick, the face naked, bluish, with thick whiskers. The forehead is whitish, the upper side of the head greyish, the extremities whitish, and the naked parts of the hands brown. This is the Callithrix donacophilus of d’Orbigny…..

Remarks: The Paris Museum has several specimens:
– a series of type specimens, one male and two females. From Bolivia, Santa Cruz de la Sierra province, brought by d’Orbigny in 1834. The figured animal has white hands; in an other they are greyish; in another, in general more washed with red, they are brown;
– brought in 1834 by d’Orbigny from the Moxos province, Bolivia. Much redder, only has white on the ears; dark tail;
– from Peru. Acquired in 1850. Resembles very much the preceding animal.

Remarks: The full description that D. Orbigny gives, is limited to the following words: “The face is naked and blackish, the body red-grey, the head and the belly darker. The hairs of the body are annulated black, white and red, those of the tail uniformly coloured”.
I. Geoffroy comments that the depicted animal had white hands, another grey, while yet another animal, which was more reddish, had brown hands. From a fourth animal he comments that it was much redder, had white on the ears and a dark tail. He also mentions an animal from Peru that was much alike as the others.
From this short description, and the figure, it cannot be denied that C. donacophila and C. cinerascens show large similarities, and that both live in connected areas. As long as the French zoologist do not show in more precise descriptions the differences between both species, I think that I am allowed to lump both species.

Description: all hands grey. The body hair has olive colour on top and outer sides, yellow-brown black and greyish of mixed shades. The abdomen and hind limbs and sometimes even the insides of the front limbs are rust-red.
The cheeks, the sides and front of the throat are either mixed shades or grey, never red, the tail is either grey or mixed shades, the chest and the inside of the front limbs vary in the same way or they are rust-red. The abdomen and hind limbs are always rust-red or rust-yellow.

Gray, J.E. (1870). Catalogue of Monkeys, Lemurs and Fruit-eating Bats in the collection of the British Museum pp. 54-57.

Distribution: This monkey has been discovered by D’Orbigny, in Bolivia, but also comes from Peru (I. Geoffroy, 1851). The latter states that the individuals from the Mojas province and from Peru are much redder than those from St. Cruz de la Sierra and they have a dark tail.

Description: Under parts pale red, but only behind the throat. This tinge is, moreover, at a young age, little pronounced and reduced at the inner sides of the thighs. The hairs on the other parts are ringed dark-brown and grey-whitish. The latter tinge dominates on the tail and the sides of the body, where the hairs are lengthened. The upper side is more or less washed reddish. The ears are covered with whitish hairs.

Remarks: I think that we can add to the synonyms of this species the C. cinerascens of Spix, observed by the voyager in the forests of Putumayo or Iça, on the border with Peru. Wagner reported that the only animal brought by Spix had the size of a C. cupreus. It must therefore have been a young individual, as C. donacophila is larger.
The museum in Leiden has four specimens. The first is a large adult from Peru, with a total length of 29 thumbs, of which the tail is 17. The red on the belly extends towards the chest. The second, also from Peru, is a smaller individual that resembles the first, but the back is strongly washed red and the tail darker. The red on the under parts of the third specimen is weakly pronounced and bordered to the inner sides of the limbs; the hairs of the sides, the back of the thighs and the underside of the basal part of the tail are lengthened and whitish. This animal origins from Bolivia, from the voyage of D’Orbigny. Finally there is another specimen from Bolivia, also from the voyage of D’Orbigny. The red is little pronounced, limited to the inside of the thighs. He is only 23 thumbs long, and agrees with the C. cinerascens of Spix.

Remarks: the Leiden museum has four individuals:
– two adult individuals, from Peru. Obtained from Frank;
– a female of mean age, one of the types of the species, from Bolivia. From the collections of d’Orbigny, 1834;
– a young individual, one of the types of the species, from Bolivia. From d’Orbigny.

Description: Under and upper side different colours. The under side is vivid coppery or pallid red. Tail with long hairs at the base. Ventral side from the throat backwards and the inner side of the limbs pale-red. Hairs of the other parts of the body annulated brown and grey-white; predominantly grey-white on the tail. Washed with red on the back. Ears whitish.

Distribution: Found in high forests, Province of Sara, Central Bolivia, alt. 2,100 feet.

Description: Top and sides of head reaching to the throat, varying from orange rufous and black to cinnamon rufous and black; upper parts varying from dark greyish brown to a reddish brown washed with grey, grading into deep russet on the rump; flanks, hairs broadly tipped with greyish white, forming a whitish fringe along the sides; arms to elbows like back; forearms silvery grey and black, the hairs black at base with silvery grey tips; outer side of legs grey and deep russet; inner side of limbs, and under parts dark cinnamon rufous, darkest on belly; hands and feet yellowish grey to iron grey; fingers and toes whitish; tail, greyish white at base, yellowish grey for the remainder; hairs on ears white; face covered with short white hairs.

Remarks: The specimen from which D’Orbigny’s figure was taken is in the Paris Museum, and marked “type de la figure.” It is greatly faded, but still in the main corresponds to the description given above from fresh examples in the British Museum, obtained in practically the same locality from which D’Orbigny’s type came. The real type of C. donacophilus cannot be identified, as all the examples are marked as ‘types’ and there is no way of ascertaining which was the one originally described.

Elliot, D.G. (1913). A review of the primates 1: 234-257.

Osgood, 1916

Callicebus donacophilus

Localities: Todos Santos, Bolivia.

Description: These are almost wholly russet brown on the upper parts, the hairs being faintly annulated with darker and without any distinct greyish areas. The hands and feet and tail are abruptly greyish in sharp contrast. The median under parts and the inner sides of the legs are bright clear tawny.

Distribution: Bolivia and Peru. Osgood (1916) reported two specimens from Todos Santos on the Rio Chaparé, affluent of the Rio Mamoré.

Description: A predominantly dark-grey form, with decided rufous tinge, but subject to some individual variation. Gray (1870) recognized several varieties, but his “var. 1” probably represents the allied race pallescens, for typical donacophilus is darker.
Distinguished from typical gigot by the darker tinge of the upper parts, which are more grizzled, and by the conspicuous white hairs on the ears, the les rufous tail and by the distinct whitish area on the dorsum of the base of the tail (sometimes lacking individually); also by the generally shorter hairs, and by the whitish hands and feet and the usually entirely rufous or buffy under parts. Face black, but well covered with short, stiff white hairs, except around eyes. A distinct black supraorbital fringe. Forehead and crown rusty wood-brown, each hair yellow or buff at base with a black band following and then alternately brown and black annulations distally. Dorsum of body with longer hairs, individually dark grey basally for about half of the shaft then buff with a subterminal black band within the buff. Hairs on flanks similar but much longer. Hairs on under parts colcolorous throughout, short and soft, predominantly rufous or buff. Tail with long white hairs at base above, shorter and more grizzled over the rest, bit lengthening again towards tip, which bears a terminal tuft some 50mm. long. Forearms and hind-limbs with many white-tipped hairs; hands and feet with mostly white, with a few short black hairs interspersed. Female is similar to the male but more greyish and less brown dorsally, the rump inclining to rufous in many individuals.

Remarks: According to Krieg (1930), Mojos is in the damp tropical zone as distinct from the forest of Chaco, which is characterized by dry winters. Presumably the different climatic conditions concerned are factors in the differentiation of pallescens from donacophilus.

Type locality: Moxos province, Bolivia. The specimen of the original description is a coloured figure only with the name in caption published in 1836. According to Rode (1938), the selected lectotype is an adult female in the Paris Museum.

Distribution: Southern Amazonian and northern Paraguayan river basins; in western Bolivia from the Rio Mamoré in the departments of Beni, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, north in south central Brazil to the Rios Guaporé and upper Jiparaná in the State of Guaporé est into the upper Rio Paraguay basin in Mato Grosso and south into Chaco region of Paraguay. Altitude range to approximately 500m asl.

Description: (key to species:) general body colour grey, reddish or brown; under parts like back or sharply defined reddish orange or buff; hind feet black, brown, red or grey, tail grey or blackish with tip grey or grey mixed with black; throat like chest; forearms grey, red, dark brown sometimes blackish above; upper surface of hands grey to blackish never sharply contrasted with colour of upper side of wrists. Forehead like crown, grey to reddish brown and not defined from nape; outer sides of forearms coarsely ticked greyish, buffy or brown. Sides of head not defined from crown; upper portion of pinna conspicuously tufted whitish, tail dominantly greyish throughout.

Measurements: see table in publication.

Remarks:Callicebus moloch donacophilus is extremely pale in the southern and south-western part of its range. Elsewhere, it is difficult to distinguish from neighbouring races and allocations of some individuals may be arbitrary. Miranda Ribeiro (1914) referred one specimen from Urupá, Rio Jiparaná to Callicebus remulus. Another from the same locality was said to resemble much moloch but was described under the new name C. geoffroy. A third from higher up the Jiparaná at 12º S, was ascribed to Callicebus cinerascens but said to be much like C. melanochir of Bahia. The details of its colouration point only to donacophilus and true moloch. Geographically they are nearest the former to which they are assigned.
A dominantly greyish specimen at hand from Puerto Casado, Rio Paraguay, north of Concepción, the type locality of pallescens, agrees very closely to the description and coloured figure of the type of donacophilus. Another specimen from Buena Vista, Santa Cruz, Bolivia is browner while one from Todos Santos, Cochabamba, with comparatively poorly developed ear tufts is warmly coloured throughout except for its greyish hands, feet and tail.

Remarks: The Nova Colina skin, although more reddish on its under parts than other specimens I have examined of C. moloch (C. moloch moloch sensu Hershkovitz, 1963), is here assigned to this species because it presents the upper parts of limbs grizzled grey with lighter hands and feet, greyish crown and brownish dorsum, becoming greyish brown on the sides.
The records from Rondonia are the south-westernmost of C. moloch, a species previously known only from the state of Para, between the rivers Tapajos and Tocantins. Miranda-Ribeiro (1914) reported C. remulus, a junior synonym of C. moloch, from Urupa, a locality adjacent to Ji-Parana, Rondonia, but I found no specimens from this locality in the Museu Nacional. Miranda-Ribeiro did not describe the skins he assigned to C. remulus and Hershkovitz (1963) judged the specimens to be misidentified C. moloch donacophilus, in which he was followed by later authors. C. cineracens (sic) Spix 1823, was also reported by Miranda-Ribeiro from the headwaters of the Jiparana, then in Mato Grosso, now in Rondonia. One skin from this locality I have seen at the Museu Nacional is not C. moloch and is also quite distinct from donacophilus, which Hershkovitz (1963) thought to be the correct identification of the specimen.Callicebus geoffroyi of Miranda-Ribeiro, 1914, type locality Urupa, Rondonia, was named after a single skin but was not formally described except for a comment on its similarity to a plate by I. Geoffroy (1844, plate 3) captioned as moloch Hoff. but that Miranda-Ribeiro did not consider to represent “true” moloch. I have not found the holotype of C. geoffroyi in the Museu Nacional but the skin of MNRJ 2925, without locality, is identified by Miranda-Ribeiro himself as geoffroyi (see also Avila-Pires, 1963). This skin is in poor condition but it compares favourably with I. Geoffroy’s plate which, in my opinion, represents an individual of C. moloch. The Museu Nacional specimen differs from the Nova Colina skin by having lighter throat and forehead. This type of variation, however, is found in other series of C. moloch I have examined. Therefore C. geoffroyi Miranda-Ribeiro should be considered a junior synonym of C. moloch Hoffmannsegg, 1807, and not of C. moloch donacophilus D’Orbigny, 1835, as proposed by Hershkovitz (1963).

Hershkovitz, 1988

Callicebus donacophilus donacophilus

Member of the donacophilus group.

Remarks: The geographical range of the Bolivian and Paraguayan Callicebus donacophilus includes parts of the upper Rio Beni drainage basin which also supports Callicebus brunneus, C. olallae and C. modestus. Probable contact between the species is not indicated by present information.

The C. donacophilus group is composed of small species; morphologically intermediate between the C. modestus and C. moloch groups, but nearer the latter.

The distribution of C. olallae, C. modestus, C. brunneus and C. donacophilus donacophilus, correlate with Brown’s single postulated refuge 22 (yungas). Present geographic distribution of prototypes of the most primitive living species C. olallae, C. modestus, C. oenanthe, C. donacophilus, and the hypothetical prototype of the C. moloch group is rooted in the southwestern portion of the generic range, well beyond the Río Solimoes Amazons flood plain.

Type locality: “In the woods and among the reeds bordering the rivers [of the Rio Mamore basin] in the province of Moxos, Republic of Bolivia”. Holotype represented by a coloured figure of animal captioned “Callithrix donacophilus, d’Orb[igny]” in the “Atlas” of the Mammals of the “Voyage dans l’Amerique Meridionale”, issued 1836 as a separate folio without text. The holotype, apparently an adult, sex unknown, was presumably preserved mounted, perhaps with skull in skin, in the exhibition galleries of the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. I did not find the specimen in the museum collection.

Remarks: Hershkovitz (1988) listed two subspecies for C. donacophilus but did not list specimens or localities for them. Subsequently, he (Hershkovitz, 1990) restricted the subspecies to Paraguay and Brazil and referred his Bolivian material to C. d. donacophilus. However, he had not seen the four specimens here referred to C. d. pallescens. Callicebus pallescens was described by Thomas (1907b: 161), type locality “30 miles [= 48 km] N of Concepcion,” in the Chaco of Paraguay). With so few specimens, these subspecific assignments remain quite tentative.

Anderson, S. (1997). Mammals of Bolivia, Taxonomy and Distribution. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 231: 1-652.

Ferrari et al., 2000

Callicebus donacophilus

Distribution: This species’ distribution is clearly associated with open habitats, such as the swampy grasslands of the Pantanal and the Paraguayan Chaco, which suggests that C. donacophilus may be restricted in Rondonia to the Guaporé grasslands in the extreme south of the state.

Measurements: Small in size, females larger than males; head plus body length 278-330 mm in male, 305-420 mm in female.

Roosmalen et al., 2002

Callicebus donacophilus

Type locality: Río Mamoré basin, province of Moxos, Bolivia. The holotype, an adult of unknown sex, is depicted as “Callithrix donacophilus d’Orb(igny)” in the “Atlas of the Mammals of the Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale”, published in 1836 as a separate folio without text. The animal must have been mounted and exhibited in the galleries of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, but was not found in the museum collection (Hershkovitz, 1990) (callicebus.nl: the holotype is still present in th MHNH collection).

Distribution: We found groups of C. modestus between Yacuma and Maniqui Rivers, and groups of both species in the riverine forests of the Maniqui River. Subsequently we investigated reports of the presence of C. modestus to the east of the Mamoré River (M. Herrera, pers. comm. to R. Wallace), but instead were able to verify the presence of Callicebus donacophilus at this location. Additional observations of C. donacophilus east of the Maniqui and Mamoré Rivers suggest that neither C. modestus nor C. olallae occur further east of the Maniqui River.

Localities: Coquinal community at Rogaguado Lake (12°58’15.24”S, 65°51’33.30” W), located to the northwest of Santa Ana de Yacuma (their northernmost distributional limit).

Description: Individuals showed characteristic grayish brown agouti pelage dorsally with the tail lighter than the body. This color pattern clearly contrasts with the reddish coloration of the body fur of both C. modestus and C. olallae, with the latter having a dark gray tail pelage. The conspicuous white ear tufts and a similar coloration on the mouth area of the face, together with the light grayish coloration of hand and feet pelage were other features useful to distinguish this species from the endemic Callicebus that have relatively small ear tufts with a different gray tone on the fur of hands and feet. Juveniles of C. donacophilus also showed an almost white tail as well as characteristic head coloration patterns where white ear tufts are small and almost all of the face had abundant grayish fur, with only the eyes and part of the nose and mouth darker (endemic Callicebus juvenile heads have almost the same color pattern as adults). An important observation was the orange coloration in the ventral region of the body, arms and legs on some adult males, apparently a color variation related to the reproductive season (K. Dingess, pers. comm. 2007).

Remarks: The presence of C. donacophilus at Rogaguado lake is somewhat surprising given the relative isolation of this forest from others where this species has been registered. The Amazonian forest north of this lake is the nearest major forest block and it is actually connected by the narrow gallery forest of the Yata river. However, the absence of the Callicebus sp. from Australia at Rogaguado suggests that this gallery forest may not serve as a corridor. The nearest records of C. donacophilus to Coquinal are at Venecia ranch south of the Maniqui river (Anderson 1997) and at the Huacaraje community near Blanco river on the opposite side of the Mamoré river (Martínez & Wallace 2007), perhaps suggesting that historically forest connections existed between Rogaguado and the southern forests. Paleo-geographical studies of the forest-savanna complex including archeological aspects related to ancient grassland management need to be taken into account in future explanations of Callicebus distributions in the Beni Department.